


Off Book

by inamac



Series: Filming HP7 [1]
Category: British Actor RPF, Harry Potter - Rowling, Harry Potter RPF
Genre: Acting, Action/Adventure, Gen, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-19
Updated: 2009-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 04:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/83167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inamac/pseuds/inamac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is June 2009. Somewhere south of junction 21 of the M25 work is in progress on the filming of 'Potter 7'.  Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off Book

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer**: Lucius Malfoy belongs to JK Rowling - everyone else... doesn't. If a lawyer for any of the latter is reading this it is worth stressing now that no-one could be lowered in the eyes of reasonable people generally by being depicted as carrying out heroic deeds in the Potterverse (or, indeed, anywhere else).

Read-throughs were as much about getting to know other people's working methods as trying out the script and blocking business. The well-oiled machine that was the Harry Potter Pension Plan was, in these early stages, not much different from a low-budget BBC drama - except that you got a slightly better class of mineral water, and real glasses.

"I have succeeded in placing an Impress curse..."

"Im-peer-io-us," the correction came simultaneously from three different sources round the table.

The speaker coughed. "Sorry. It's these weird words and names. Imperious curse... upon the head of Magical Law Enforcement, Pius Thickness."

The man at the head of the table picked up the cue. "It is a start. He has the ear of the Minister..." He hesitated, "Jamie, I think I should look at Lucius at this point - intimidating ministers should have been his job."

"If I hadn't been in Azkaban," The man thus addressed said, dryly.

"Still a sore point?" Ralph Fiennes grinned. "I don't think that Voldemort is inclined to be forgiving. Okay. Consider yourself reprimanded." He ran a finger along the page, finding his place. "But Thickness – I assume that refers to his intelligence? Sorry, – is only one man."

"He will convert others, my Lord. If Potter makes a move we shall know immediately."

"Then he will have to move in the open. Easier to take by far. I shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned."

The assistant director, sitting with the scriptwriter to one side of the occupied table, nodded. "And then there's the sound of a scream. But Voldemort doesn't look at Wormtail during the next speech. We'll hold a close up."

"Like this?" For the first time Ralph's voice held threat. "Wormtail, have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?"

"Yep. Then more reaction shots… Pick up from Wormtail's exit."

"As I was saying. I understand better now. I shall need to borrow a wand before I go to kill Potter." There was no inflection in the words, this was, after all, the first read-through, but this particular scene had occasioned a certain amount of ribald comment before the ink was dry on the script. "Lucius," Ralph continued, eyes glinting with out-of-character amusement, "I see no reason for you to have a ... wand ... any more."

"M...my Lord..." Jason Isaacs pushed his half-empty glass aside and set down the script to allow himself the necessary space to mime a gesture that was, by now, second nature. "Then I draw my wand and hand it to Voldemort." His left hand curled around the imagined shaft of the cane that was, at that moment, securely locked in a props room half a mile away, while his right gave the substitute pencil a twist miming the release of the lock on the snake's head. The movement was fluid and practiced, and abruptly aborted as he leaned forward to complete the scripted action by handing the yellow and black length of wood to the man at the head of the table.

There was a pause as everyone focused on the littered expanse of plywood between the head, where Ralph had half-risen from his chair to reach out, and the dropped pencil, which rolled slightly before clinking to a halt against the water glass.

The assistant director shook out his copy of the script and ran a finger along the relevant line: "Malfoy takes out his wand and passes it along to Voldemort." He turned to the round faced, tousle-haired man at his side. "That's not going to work, Steve. They're not playing 'pass the parcel' across five feet of polished hardwood.

The screenplay writer frowned. "That was the original text. What if Lucius levitates it to Voldemort? It'd be a simple effect."

Jamie turned back to the table. "Jason?"

The actor shrugged. "Not really in character for a man being humiliated."

"Point. Okay everyone, take five while we thrash this one out."

At the head of the table Ralph stretched. "Pity. I was looking forward to getting to the length-comparison bit. I'm sure that mine's going to be longer than yours, Jason."

"Ah, but not nearly as attractive." Alan Rickman's unmistakable velvet tones carried a wealth of innuendo, emphasised by a wicked, and entirely un-Snapelike grin.

"Perhaps." Ralph smiled, and dropped his voice to Voldemort's threatening whisper. "And what about _your_ wand, Snape? How long is _that_?"

"I find it quite adequate for my purposes." The reply was acerbic, pitched to carry so that half the people in the room looked up and there was a smattering of laughter. Both men turned back to the hot-water urns.

"Coffee?"

Cast and staff moved in the direction of the refreshments table. Little knots of people began to form, production crew discussing the glitches highlighted by the read-through, a few scurrying for the door in order to catch a quick fag break before work resumed. Jason picked up the pencil from the table to make a few notations on his own script - and froze when a hand touched his shoulder and a disturbingly familiar voice drawled "Might I have a word?"

He looked up, and met cool grey eyes, framed with pale lashes, and shadowed by a fall of long, white-blond hair.

"Who the hell...!"

The intruder's long lips flashed in a sardonic smile. "Lucius Malfoy, at your service."

After half a decade as the focus of stalkers, fangirl obsessives and plain weirdoes this situation was not entirely unfamiliar, but he had expected this place to have much better security. "How did you get in here?"

The man took a drag on a long, thin, tipless cigarette and somehow managed to avoid making the action look either theatrical or effeminate. Jason found himself making a mental note of the gesture for future reference.

"I apparated."

"Then you'd better apparate out again before I call security." He slathered Mark Brydon's confidence over a sudden pang of uncertainty. The one place he shouldn't have to deal with nutters was while he was working. Leavesden had tight security at the best of times, with the Potter crew on site the place was guarded like Buckingham Palace. Only more discretely.

"They wouldn't hear you." The lazy drawl was grating - exactly the sort of fingernails-on-blackboard effect that he had intended when he'd created the 'Malfoy voice'. "Or see us either," the blond added. "Privacy charm."

"Does it also block out the nicotine?" Jason asked, part curious, part covering for an unease that, if he hadn't technically given it up, would have had him reaching for a cigarette himself.

"Ah." For answer the other took a long drag, tilted his head back to allow his hair to fall straight behind his shoulders, and blew a neat smoke ring. "Your delicate Muggle metabolism. How long did it take you to realise it was a poison for you? Three centuries? You should never have tried aping your betters. Did you know," he added, sending another mouthful of smoke rising ceilingwards, "that it was we wizards who popularised the habit in Elizabeth's day? Dee and Kelley conducted their rituals in a positive fog of tobacco smoke. Half the participants in this little gathering that you are attempting to reproduce were chainsmoking. It took the house elves months to rid the Manor of the smell of Yaxley's dreadful cigars, and those Russian cigarettes of Bella's." He examined the glowing tip of his own cigarette thoughtfully. "I sometimes wonder whether, if the Dark Lord had been resurrected with the ability to appreciate the scent of a really fine tobacco, he might not have been less - irritable. What do you think?"

The inconsequential lecture had, as the wizard had no doubt intended, given the actor the chance to recover from the shock of his appearance. "I don't think that you came here to talk about smoking," he said.

Lucius nodded, and stubbed out the cigarette on the surface of the table. "No. Neither did I come to see what sort of a hatchet job you are planning to do on my reputation this time. Though granted you do have to interpret the Rowling woman's rather biased view of events." He hesitated and for the first time his eyes met Jason's. "I came to ask for your help."

He was very convincing. For the moment it was probably better to humour him. "Now I know this is a joke. A wizard asking a Muggle for help"

There was a flash of anger in the grey eyes. He must have looked like that, Jason thought, when Voldemort had really asked for his wand. Reluctant but trapped.

"I do not make jokes. At least, not about things that touch my family. I am asking you not as a wizard, but as a father."

Involuntarily Jason glanced across to where Tom was bent over his mobile phone, taking the opportunity of the break to send a twitter message. Lucius followed the look and shook his head. "Not Draco. The boy is more than old enough now to look after himself and his own family. Narcissa and I have a daughter. She is five years old. And she has been kidnapped."

The actor had scarcely noticed the effect of the privacy charm until that moment. Now he was conscious that he and Lucius were standing in a bubble of absolute silence, as if the wizard's words had frozen time. It was the tone that finally convinced him. The most accomplished actor in the room could not have faked that level of anguished concern. His own worst nightmare voiced by someone he knew as intimately as a lover.

"That... that still doesn't explain why you'd want my help. What could I possibly do that you can't?"

Lucius looked at him thoughtfully. "You can do what you've been doing for years. Act as my proxy. Only this time," his lips curved in an ironic smile that did not touch his eyes, "there will be no need for wig or costume."

"Very enigmatic. If you're serious about this you're going to have to explain in words a mere Muggle can understand."

Lucius glanced around the room, then pulled out the chair that Helen had been using and sat. It brought him down to Jason's eye level and made him far less intimidating, though no less earnest. "With one exception," he glanced to the empty place at the head of the table, "my enemies are not, normally, fools. They do not want my daughter, they want me – defenceless and at their mercy. They are holding her in a place so bound with magical wards that no wizard could enter without being detected and disarmed."

"And you think that I could do what you can't? Where is this place? Azkaban? Because if the books are anything like accurate I don't think that walking in there undetected is an option either."

Lucius stilled the protest with a gesture. "Nowhere so far or so alien. Before Azkaban was built the Tower of London was the most magically fortified place in Britain. Those spells are still in force. If I, or any wizard, attempts to cross the threshold it would set off alarms. Whoever has my daughter knows that - I would not get within a yard of the gate before they attacked me. Probably terminally. I would be - what is the Muggle phrase - a sitting duck? But for a Muggle… He shrugged. "Well, the place is teeming with them. You wouldn't be noticed. Well, no more than you would be anywhere in London."

Jason swallowed. he knew that he was going to do this. He had once described Lucius as the most confident person he had ever stepped inside of. There was no confidence in the grey eyes that met his now, only desperation and a plea for help. This was what Voldemort must have seen on that last day before the battle. What was the line? _My Lord ... please ... my son..._. Voldemort's reply must have destroyed him. _If your son is dead, Lucius, it is not my fault._ It was not a reply that Jason could give.

"When?" he asked. "And how will I recognize your daughter? What's her name?"

"Hermione Malfoy." Lucius answered the last question first, and was clearly expecting Jason's expression of surprise. He smiled, this time with warmth, "And no, the name is not entirely a political move on my part. Roman names are traditional in my family. The original Hermione was the Emperor Hadrian's nurse. And as for recognition, she is a Malfoy – blonde, sharp-featured, though I confess with some relief, rather less full of self-importance than her brother was at that age. When? They expect me now – but," he rose, reaching inside his cloak to pull out a crystal-and-silver object that looked nothing like the props for the fourth movie. "I have a time-turner. We can meet their deadline, and return before this break is over."

This was all happening far too quickly. Jason couldn't remember the last time he'd been asked to switch so quickly from fantasy to reality, and now the junction was so blurred that he was not at all sure he wasn't dreaming this. Overwork and too many late nights, probably.

"Look," he ran his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration, grateful that he wasn't wearing the wig, and inadvertently reminding himself that there was another objection to this proposal, "If the kidnappers wouldn't recognise me your daughter certainly won't. Kids don't." Sometimes, not even my own, he carefully did not add.

The objection slid off the wizard's smile. "No. But you underestimate my daughter. She will recognise Captain Hook - and Mr Darling. She adores that film. When she was four she spent a week telling the house elves that she didn't believe in them." He smiled fondly. "It was a salutary lesson on the difference between fiction and reality."

"I can understand her confusion."

Lucius nodded. "Yes, I daresay you can." Then the amusement was gone and he was again severely grave. "And I do understand your confusion, Mr Isaacs. But I assure you that my dilemma is real. And your help would be much appreciated. Indeed, I believe it is the only hope for a rescue for my daughter - and myself."

"Don't your people have police to handle this sort of thing?" He thought frantically, dragging the word up from memory, "Aurors?"

"The job of the Aurors is to hunt out Dark Wizards." Lucius gave an ironic smile. "I do my best to avoid their notice. They would have no interest in a matter that is family business. Any wizard is expected to be able to protect his own family. I assure you, you will be in no danger."

"The last time someone said that to me I ended up underneath a rearing horse."

"I assume that the person who reassured you on that occasion was not a competent wizard? I do promise you that in this case there is nothing for you to fear. Any traps will have been set for me. They won't close around you. They won't even notice that you're there – until it's too late."

Jason pushed his own chair back and rose to join Lucius. "I hope I live to regret this. Okay, how does apparition really work?"

Lucius reached out an arm and settled it around the other man's shoulder. "Simply enough. Though because of the wards around the Tower I will be constrained to apparate us to a place a short distance away. I just hope that –"

Jason could not remember whether the books had described the sensation of side-along apparition, but was fairly certain that Jo Rowling had lacked his experience with gyroscopic flying apparatus that would have provided her with the perfect simile. The sensation of having the ground moved from under ones feet was both mentally and physically unbalancing. He was grateful for the support of Lucius' arm, though the wizard seemed as unperturbed as any London commuter stepping off an escalator in the station behind them. He had not even paused for breath.

"— there is no one around to see our arrival."

The end of the speculative sentence might have been a statement of fact. They stood in the lee of a portion of the old Roman city wall, and although there were people moving along the walkway above, and into the station behind, their arrival had clearly gone unnoticed.

"This is as close as I dare approach. From here I must rely on you to bring my daughter back safely." He gave instructions rapidly and concisely, with the assurance of a man used to command and obedience. Finally he reached into his coat pocket and produced two objects, a leather case, and a small stoppered bottle. "This pass will get you into the Tower. And this…"

"'Liquid Luck'?" The demonstration of real magic had made him much less sceptical. Lucius nodded.

"Felix Felicis. It might help. If you trust me enough to accept anything from my hands?"

For answer Jason reached out and took the bottle. Magic or placebo? It did not really matter. "What harm can it do?" he asked, as he uncorked it and took the few drops onto his tongue. It tasted of strawberries, and chocolate, and fine brandy.

Lucius nodded. "Indeed. We make our own luck, but we should not ignore superstition." He stepped back into the shadow of the wall and gestured to the Tower ahead. "I believe the appropriate phrase is 'break a leg'."

Whether it was the luck potion, or the feeling that this was, indeed, like stepping onto a stage to give a performance, albeit an improvised one, the confidence with which he approached the entrance to the tourist site was not entirely feigned.

It was still early in the tourist season. In two weeks time, when the school holidays really began, the queues for the turnstiles would be all the way round the walls and half-way to Greenwich by now, but there were very few people about and the heads which turned to watch him as he crossed the cobblestones to the main gate, did not linger. If he had not been so tense he might have been amused. For once in his life he would be grateful to disappoint an audience.

The attendant at the gate barely glanced at the pass, more concerned with the group of backpackers who followed him. The delay while their bags were checked meant that the area beyond the entrance was almost deserted. Although he had Lucius's instructions, and there were numerous signposts, it took him a moment or so to get orientated. He walked quickly between the high walls of Water Lane, passing the arch over Traitor's Gate and the range of the Medieval Palace. The barrier at the end of the path sent him under the archway of the Lanthorn Tower into the second range of defences, and the lawn where the Raven's cages were situated. One of the birds looked at him balefully, and he wondered whether it was a spy, and, if so, for which side. There were more people here, but crowded in knots around tour guides and the Tower yeomen in their colourful and ancient uniforms. Really some of the extremes of costume that Wardrobe came up with for the Wizarding world could not compete with non-Wizarding reality.

He turned to his right., where a steep flight of stone steps led up to the top of the wall and the first floor entrance to the Wizard's Tower. As he reached the last of the 30 steps he glanced down, and saw a man in long scarlet robes crossing the courtyard below. He hesitated. Were these the wizards who had captured Lucius's daughter? Moving so openly in a Muggle place? Two women followed, in long, thickly embroidered dresses, hair coiled demurely under tall pointed headdresses. And behind them… Jason let out a breath that he had not realised he had been holding. King Henry VIII, in tights, breeches and slash-sleeved doublet passed directly under the arch. The Tower's historical re-enactment group returning from a performance on the South Lawn. He drew back quickly into the shadow of the wall as the final members of the company emerged; two men stripped to their linen shirts, doublets slung casually over shoulders, and carrying the swords with which they had been staging a duel. He had done a workshop with Paul not long ago, and recognition here and now might be problematical, given that he was supposed to be working on the other side of London. The players passed under the wall and through the barrier to the private apartments. Satisfied that they were gone, and there were no other eyes on the East Wall, he turned back to the path and examined his destination.

Looking at the narrow, dark doorway ahead he wished that he was thirty miles away. The sign over the door confirmed that he had reached his destination. The Salt Tower.

Or, as Malfoy had explained when setting out his plans, "The Wizard's Tower." He had given a predatory smile, "If they had chosen to hold her anywhere else I might have acceded to their demands – there is no escape possible from the White Tower. But the place you call the Salt Tower is where, in 1561, Queen Elizabeth chose to imprison one of my ancestors, Hew Draper, under suspicion of Sorcery. It was a well-founded suspicion. He was a master Arithmantician and used the opportunity of his incarceration to carve a large, incredibly intricate, portkey. His work is still there, etched on the wall. It needs only the appropriate word to activate it. A word which, fortunately, is recorded in his private papers, which reside in the Malfoy library. My family has always been careful about sharing such knowledge. None of Hermione's captors will know it. But," Lucius's smile widened and became genuinely warm, "I think you count as 'family'. The word is _Fidelity_. You have only to gain hold of my daughter, place your hand over the carving, speak the word, and the Key will take you, and Hermione, to the Manor."

There was one thing about the 'Malfoy Voice' he had thought, experiencing it for the first time from the wrong side, was that no matter how outrageous his proposals, one simply could not argue. Fudge hadn't stood a chance.

He steeled himself and stepped through the door.

At first he thought that the room was crowded. Then he realised that a screen had been placed on the wall opposite the door, with a camera above which projected images of anyone in the room onto a film of the historical occupants of the place. A ghostly pageant of past and present. He saw his own image projected onto that of a man in fifteenth century dress, cap and blood-coloured robe, bent over a desk scribbling on parchment. The scene shifted a century and there were the Gunpowder Plotters, chained, awaiting execution. In fact there were only two other men in the six-sided room, both wearing unseasonably long coats which marked them as the wizards they undoubtedly were. They gave his image on the projector a cursory glance as he entered, their gazes passed on, waiting for the blond wizard who was their quarry.

His own quarry was unmistakable. Even had she not been the only child in the room, and carrying herself with an arrogance beyond her years, the white-blonde hair scraped back into bunches and the small, pointed features were unmistakable. She was standing against the far wall, where a narrow window gave a view over the roofs of the outer bailey to Tower Bridge. On the right was an enormous fireplace, easily big enough for three people to stand upright in, with a black iron cauldron full of a greenish powder set to one side of the hearth – it occurred to him that this was probably how they had brought the child here – and how they planned to take Lucius away, when they caught him.

To his left was a second doorway, leading back along the wall walk, and on the wall beside it, at waist-level, the intricate carved memorial to Hew Draper's captivity.

He took a breath, preparing for a performance on which his life, and that of the child, depended. Then he stepped forward as casually as if he were boarding a bus and knelt to bring himself down to her eye level. Very softly, and hoping that, after a six year hiaitus he could still get the intonation right, he whispered, "Hello, Hermione. Tell me, do you believe in fairies?"

Her blue eyes widened in recognition. Lucius had been right, she was a very bright child. She bounced on the balls of her feet and practically threw herself into his arms.

"I do! I do! I do believe in fairies! Have you come to take me to Neverland?"

"I've come to take you home. Hold tight."

He rose and swung her into his arms, conscious that the two men were moving, their hands reaching inside their coats, seeking waepons. But they had been expecting Lucius. This was a trap that had been set for a wizard and they had dismissed the muggles in the room as irrelevant, beneath their notice. By the time the first of them realised that their bait had been taken and pulled out his wand - it was too late.

"Who _are_ you?" he asked, too shocked even to use a spell.

Jason could not resist it. If he was Malfoy's stooge they should at least know what they were dealing with. "Think of me," he drawled, in tones that dripped aristocratic privilege, "as your worst nightmare." He reached out with his free hand and his fingers scraped over incised stone. "Fidelity!"

***

Rowling's description of what it felt like to be transported by portkey, he thought, as he tried to control his nausea enough to avoid throwing up on the expensive looking Persian carpet, could use some improvement. If it wasn't a flying carpet it certainly felt like one.

A pale, long-fingered hand pressed a small crystal goblet into his hand.

"Drink this. It will help. I'm afraid that several-times great uncle Huw's spell has deteriorated a bit with age. At least it worked."

He had tossed back the viscous liquid before the sense of the words registered. They were more reviving than the potion. "You mean that you weren't sure that it would?"

"Well, not entirely. But I was entrusting my daughter's life to it. Believe me, it wasn't a decision I took lightly."

"You…!" The protest died on his lips. He had always known exactly how duplicitous Lucius Malfoy could be. And the fact remained, he was alive, and had a wealth of material to draw on in future. The wizard's next words demonstrated that duplicity was too kind a word.

"You realize," Lucius said, "that, once I have returned you to your own time and place, I will have to erase your memory of this?" He drew his wand.

"No! Wait. There's stuff I _have_ to remember."

The wizard raised an eyebrow. It was a delicate, unique gesture, that reinforced the actor's desperation. "Nothing important. Not to you. But I need... character details. How to draw a wand, what a portkey feels like, stuff like that."

"Ah. I see. Unfortunately memory charms are not selective. But I do owe you a great deal. Perhaps not a memory charm, but the alternative is an Unforgivable Curse. If I put you under Imperious you would be unable to speak of this. Would you consent?"

"I..." Imperious was a spell that could put its caster into Azkaban. It was a measure of Lucius' gratitude that he would even offer this. And of his trust. "I consent."

"Very well. You are right, it may be useful for you to have some memory of this, particularly as I expect to see you again when you are on location at the Manor."

Jason's eyes widened. "Here? We're supposed to be using Hardwick. Or Mentmore."

"Do you really think that I would allow any Muggle to pass their house off as the home of a Malfoy? Besides, these are difficult times financially, and I see no reason why I should not benefit from the commercialisation of my own humiliation. I would rather see Muggle cash in my account than the National Trust's. And now…. _Imperio_!"

***

"Okay everyone, back to work." The director's voice cut through the buzz of conversation in the room. "Let's get this thing nailed."

The chair next to Jason scraped over the bare wood of the floor as Tom settled into it. The sound drew the director's eye. "Mobiles off, everyone. Jason? Are you with us? What are your thoughts on this wand business?"

"If I'm going to hand it to Voldemort he needs to be on the other side of the table from me. How about he takes Wormtail's chair once he's left the room?"

At the head of the table Ralph nodded. "Jason's right. Voldemort does not sit still. This is a Death Eater battle conference, not a bloody board meeting." He pushed back his chair and stood, drawing every eye.

The scriptwriter coughed. "Would he leave an empty chair? It's not very intimidating..."

"I believe," Alan said dryly, "That sitting next to twenty feet of man-eating snake will be sufficient intimidation."

"Ah. Right. I'd forgotten the snake."

"Thinking too much about our wands, I expect."

Ralph moved round the table, touching the backs of chairs, the shoulders of seated players, until finally reaching the place opposite the three Malfoys. Again the line expelling Wormtail held a chilling menace. Tim fairly leapt from the seat. Ralph threw the vacant chair aside as he leaned forward, setting one hand flat on the table, the other clawed, reaching. "Let's see ... Lucius I see no reason for you to have a wand any more."

~Fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Hugh Draper really was imprisoned for Sorcery in the Tower of London, and he really did carve an astronomical map on the wall of the Salt Tower, which is open to the public (and is, like all the historic graffiti, covered with glass). The Tower records report that "Hugh Draper committed the 21st of March 1560 - This man was brought in by the acusation of one John Man, an astronomer, as a suspect of a conjourer or sorcerer, and thereby to practise matter againste Sr William St Lowe and my Ladie*. And in his confession it apperithe that before time he hathe ben busie and doinge wth suche matters, but he deniethe any matter of weight touchinge Sr Wiliam Sentlo or my Ladie, and also affirmethe yt longe since he soe misliked his science, that he burned al his books**. He is pntly verie sicke: he semithe to be a man of goode wealthe and kepithe a taverne at bristowe and is of his neighbours well reported."
> 
> *The 'ladie' was Bess of Hardwick - creator of Hardwick Hall, currently owned by the National Trust and rumoured to be one of the sites for filming of Deathly Hallows.
> 
> ** This reference to a sorcerer burning his books is thought to be the source of Prospero's speech on giving up magic in _The Tempest_ (Yes, everyone in Elizabethan England seems to have known each other...)


End file.
